Summary

The first season of Steven Universe mainly focuses around Steven learning about being a Crystal Gem along with the history of the Crystal Gems. Throughout the first part of this season, Steven mainly hangs around Beach City.

In "Gem Glow", Steven's gem glows for the first time along with his ability to summon his weapon, and he and the gems, Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet defeat the Centipeetle, a gem monster that has attacked the Beach House. In "Laser Light Cannon", Steven works with his dad Greg find one of Steven's mother's, the beloved Rose Quartz, cannon, the only way to defeat a machine sent from space to track the existence of Gems on Earth. In "Cheeseburger Backpack" the Gems take him at the Lunar Sea Spire, to aid them on a mission, that turns out a fail. He explores the Gem Temple trying to join his family for a fantastic breakfast, in "Together Breakfast" and helps Peedee, a friend, with a bizarre costume situation, in "Frybo". He learns how to partially shape shift in "Cat Fingers", though things don't go as planned when his shapeshifting powers take the best of him and in "Serious Steven" he learns the importance of remaining serious during missions.

Later, he discovers Amethyst's secret life, the life of Purple Puma, her wrestler alter ego, and joins her in fights as Tiger Millionaire, only to be stopped by the other gems, in "Tiger Millionaire". He has a videogame battle with Garnet when the later is consumed by it and stops joining on missions, in "Arcade Mania" and meets Connie in "Bubble Buddies", as the two get stuck in a bubble generated by Steven when a landslide threatens to hurt his new friend.

He finds a pink lion in "Steven's Lion", whom he keeps as a pet. In "Giant Woman", Steven learns about fusing for the first time, witnessing Opal, the gracious fusion of Amethyst and Pearl, when on a mission that turns out to be more dangerous than planned. He discovers the ability to change his age in "So Many Birthdays" and almost dies when he can't control it, but survives, and meets the Beach City Cool Kids, in "Lars and the Cool Kids", when, in order to help his friend Lars fit in, he joins them on a car ride to a place that once belonged to his mom, which only causes trouble when his mother's moss starts "eating" the Cool Kids. Things get wild when, in order to get a toy he lost, Steven has to trade with the mysterious Onion, who does nothing but trouble when he decides to attack the city with dispenser toys, in "Onion Trade".

Pearl "shows" Steven how Gems recover from wounds in "Steven the Sword Fighter" after being damaged by her hologram counterpart, when trying to teach him the secrets of sword fighting, retracting to her gem after being impaled and coming back two weeks later, reformed, and his lion, Lion, takes him and Connie on a journey to a secret armory in "Lion 2: The Movie", and even has a party with the Pizzas when a mission causes the gems to destroy their pizza restaurant, in "Beach Party", defeating together Watermelon Tourmaline, a monster that has been bugging the gems for days. He manages to activate the door to Rose's Room and almost completely recreated Beach City in the episode "Rose's Room" and meets Sugilite, the destructive fusion of Garnet and Amethyst, and learns what true strength is in "Coach Steven". In "Joking Victim", Lars gets a severe back injury and needs Steven to substitute him on his work, at the Big Donut, where he helps Sadie take revenge on Lars when the two find out the injury was fake, a plan that goes too far and in "Steven and the Stevens", Steven gets hold of a magical time travelling artifact, messing with several timelines in the way, generating several clones of himself.

In "Monster Buddies", the Centipeetle returns when Steven pops the bubble she was trapped in, only this time he is ambitious to train her into an allie. However, the corrupted gem ends up saving Steven, only to be poofed and bubbled again. Steven tells Connie the story of how he was upset when he wasn't able to heal Amethyst cracked gem, like his mother used to do, but accidently heals Connie's eyesight by sharing a juice box, discovering a new power, an healing kiss, in "An Indirect Kiss"

In "Mirror Gem" and Steven releases Lapis Lazuli, from a mirror given to him by Pearl, in order for him to learn about the gem history, but this new gem isn't happy to see that no one had saved her all that time. However, when the ocean goes missing in "Ocean Gem", the Gems, Greg, Connie and Lion go on a mission to track Lapis, who turns out to just be homesick, therefore building a tower of water to reach Homeworld, the gem original planet, resulting on Steven healing her cracked gem, which enabled her to fly away, which she eventually does, returning the ocean to its place. Additionally Steven learns that every monster that they fought so far were gems too, that were corrupted and had to be kept safe.

Greg comes live with the gems in "House Guest", accidently interfearing with Steven when he lies about his leg being broken, neutralizing Steven's healing kiss powers. He learns about the Gems interstellar empire in "Space Race", when Pearl, confronted by the new concept of Lapis' freedom, gets overzealous at the idea of building a spaceship to show Steven her home, which she isn't able to. When Amethyst and Pearl accidently pop one of the bubbles keeping shards of corrupted gems, in "Secret Team", monster hands get loose in the temple and Steven and the two form a secret team to retrieve them, learning a valuable lesson about teamwork. However, things get ugly when Steven, Lars and Sadie get stuck in island, in "Island Adventure", leading to a lot of stress and a fight with a mighty monster. In the end, they learn that Sadie knew the way out of the island, but kept it a secret in order to spent some time with Lars.

Steven helps a friend, Ronaldo, see the truth in "Keep Beach City Weird", when he debunks his theories of snake people, or sneeple, infiltrated in society, in order to finish the human race and in "Fusion Cusine" Steven finally meets Connie's parents, in an awkward dinner where all the gems fuse to make the ultimate mother, the fusion Alexandrite. In "Garnet's Universe", Steven tells a tale of what he thinks Garnet does during the day and discovers the ability to create life from plants "Watermelon Steven", when he accidently makes watermelon minions of himself that get a bit too overprotective.

In "Lion 3: Straight to Video", Steven discovers an alternate dimension in Lion's mane, where he discovers an heartwarming video tape from his mother, opening her heart to him about his existence, but things get less pretty when, in "Warp Tour", robotic spheres travel through the warps in order to fix the Homeworld Warp, a teleporter to the grm's home planet, revealing a new threat, Peridot, much to the dismay and panic of the Crystal Gems, which leads to Garnet destoying the warp to prevent her return. In "Alone Together" Steven fuses with his friend Connie and forms Stevonnie, exploring his power to fuse in the best company but in "The Test", the gems come clean to Steven about his first mission, which turned out to be a test he failed, making him beg gor a new one. The gems build a series of chambers for him, that turned out to be rigged to always work out, which annoys Steven but also mskes him understand that he needs to give confidence to the gems too. In "Future Vision", Steven learns about Garnet's foresight powers, which causes him immense stress, not knowing what could happen in the future, which he is able to work out.